Maryland Pastel Society newsletter

PAST EVENTS

The Spring Meeting April, 2009

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Lisa Sheppard discussing the painting of trees in the landscape

Our Spring meeting focused on helping our members freshen up those landscape painting skills and get ready for a summer of productive outdoor (and indoor!) painting. Following a short business session, four stations were set up, one in each corner of the room, and four simultaneous demos were given: Lisa Sheppard concentrated on trees and mountains; Jean Hirons covered skies and clouds; Mary Ann Warner focused on fields and grasses; and Deborah Maklowski demonstrated painting still and moving water. The members who were present self-organized into four groups and rotated around the room in 20-minute intervals to catch all four of the demos. Rather than trying to create a typical demonstration painting (or four of them!), each of the demonstrators instead used small vignettes and/or fixed charcoal sketches prepared ahead of time to illustrate their teaching concepts for the onlookers. They also made ample use of outside resources – Pastel Journal articles, John Carlson's "Guide to Landscape Painting," and Edgar Payne's "Composition of Outdoor Painting," for example – to support their points. Feedback on this demo format has been very good, and each of the demonstrators also felt that the preparation and research they'd done to get ready were extremely beneficial for their own development.